Taking care of yourself should always be a top priority and maintaining your eye health is no exception to that. However, the majority of people don't think about their eye health and it tends to fall to the side. We should never take our eye health for granted; it is one of the most important senses we have. There are always ways that our eye health can be improved or maintained and we have compiled a list of the ways here so that you can take control of your eye health.

1. Get Annual Eye Exams

Because vision loss happens so gradually, a lot of times we don't even know anything is changing. This is why getting annual eye exams is so crucial to maintaining healthy eyes. If corrective lenses are needed, getting them early is the best possible way to ensure healing and correction. Additionally, glaucoma and macular degeneration often have little to no symptoms which means that your eye exam might be the only way to catch it.

2. Know Your History

When you do your paperwork at your eye doctor they will usually ask for some kind of family history and you may be wondering why this is relevant. Well, knowing your family's eye health history is crucial to your own eye care plan. If your family has a history of eye disease you may have to come in more often than once a year, for example. If you don't know this information it would be worth a call to your mom or grandma to try and figure out everything you can and do your best to protect yourself. 

3. Eat Right!

This is something that a lot of people don't see affecting their eye health but is actually very prominent. Eating healthy will positively affect every single aspect of your life because everything about your body is tied together in some way. For example, people who are overweight or obese have a higher chance of developing diabetes which can cause diabetic eye disease or glaucoma. Additionally, certain foods contain some of the vitamins and antioxidants that you need for your eyes. For example, many greens contain lutein and zeaxanthin which are located in the macula. Fish is also great for your eye health because it contains omega-3 fatty acids. Carrots are one of the more well-known eye-health foods. They have a lot of vitamin A which helps protect the surface of the eye.

4. Take Your Vitamins

Just like eating carrots can help protect your cornea because of the vitamin A, taking vitamin A is also a way to ensure that you have a resistant eye-surface. Taking vitamins will not only help your eyes but also every other part of your body as well. 

5. Don't Smoke!

Following along the same train of watching the things that you put into your body, smoking can have an extremely negative affect on your eyes. Smoking can cause cataracts, optic nerve damage, and macular degeneration and all three of these cause blindness. Along with these, smoking is bad for your overall health so cutting cigarettes out will improve your quality of life by multitudes.

6. Protect Your Eyes Against Blue Light

Because of the huge amount of time that Americans spend on their phones, tablets, and computers, eye doctors are concerned about their eye health. Blue light can have harmful affects on your eyes which means that, unless you are planning on limiting your screen time, you should invest in a pair of eyeglasses that has a special coating that will block the harmful rays of blue light and limit the damage.

7. Protect Your Eyes Against From The Sun 

Everybody knows that you should never look directly into the sun because the sun has harmful rays that can hurt your eyes. However, many people don't know that you should  be wearing eyeglasses that have protective coating against harmful UV rays.